NEW RELEASES

Lost and Somewhere Else by Jenny Bornholdt       $28
Jenny Bornholdt has the remarkable capacity to draw the subtlest insights out of the most everyday details. Her poetry is marked by the fine-grained quality of her noticing, by her sprightly wit, and by the generous access she provides to very precise states of feeling.  How does she achieve all this? 

>>Book now to hear Jenny Bornholdt in conversation with Clare Marcie at the VOLUME MAPUA LITERARY FESTIVAL. 

The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox       $35
The much-anticipated new novel from Elizabeth Knox is an epic fantasy that draws us deep into actuality, and is a book powerful on many levels. 
"An angelic book, an apocalyptic book, an astounding book." —Francis Spufford
"The master is present. To read Knox on such a huge canvas – to be immersed in her worlds, wrapped in her intelligence and craft so completely – is an experience not to be missed. Lessing, Le Guin, Knox – books where the best hearts meet the best minds meet the best imaginations are few and far between. The Absolute Book is a triumph of fantasy grounded in the reality and challenges of the moment we live in." —Pip Adam
>>Continuing. 

Always Song in the Water: An oceanic sketchbook by Gregory O'Brien       $45
Gregory O’Brien takes his metaphorical dinghy to the edges of New Zealand—starting with a road trip to the far North—and then voyages out into the Pacific, to lead us into some under-explored territories of the South Pacific imagination, art and literature. O’Brien uses the work of Janet Frame, Ralph Hotere, Robin White, John Pule, Epeli Hau’ofa and others to see whether we can re-imagine ourselves as an oceanic people on a small island in a big piece of water. O’Brien is invariably good company, and it is a pleasure to share his musings, discoveries and observations is this beautifully produced and illustrated volume. 
>>Book to hear Gregory O'Brien talk with Steve Austin at the VOLUME MAPUA LITERARY FESTIVAL. 

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann          $40
An Ohio mother bakes pies while the the world bombards her with radioactivity and fake facts. She worries about her children, caramelisation, chickens, guns, tardigrades, medical bills, environmental disaster, mystifying confrontations at the supermarket, and the best time to plant nasturtiums. She regrets most of her past, a million tiny embarrassments, her poverty, the loss of her mother, and the genocide on which the United States was founded. Lucy Ellmann's scorching indictment of the ills of modern life is also a plea for kindness, a remarkable virtuoso sentence, and an unforgivably funny evocation of the relentlessness of one person's thoughts. 
"A triumph." —Guardian
>>Lucy Ellmann does not care about what male reviewers think about having to read such a long book written about a woman.
>>Read the rest of the 2019 Booker Prize short list. 

The Testaments ('The Handmaid's Tale' #2) by Margaret Atwood      $48
Unfortunately, the dystopia of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale seems more plausible now than it was when the book was first published in 1985. The recent television series and the graphic novel are now followed by this sequel written by Atwood to further explore the workings of Gilead and to disclose what happens to Offred after the van door slams at the end of the first book. Atwood is one of the sharpest observers of power imbalances in human relationships and of injustice in society, and her books provide liberating ways of thinking about these issues. One of the most anticipated books of the year. 
>>Read an extract.
>>Read the rest of the 2019 Booker Prize short list. 

The Tenderness of Stones by Marion Fayolle         $55
Marion Fayolle’s beautifully strange graphic novel is an exploration of a family’s attempts at grappling with the grief and loss of a loved one bears a surreal, fairy-tale quality. The graphic novel depicts the father figure of this particular family succumbing to an undisclosed illness with a focused yet fragile sense of retrospective narration. Parts of the father's body are gradually and carefully stripped away from him — starting with one of his lungs, he proceeds to lose his mouth, his nose, and ultimately rescinds into a childlike state. With the narrator’s father now trapped in a permanently pre-pubescent form, Fayolle’s narrative and visual style come into full play as her introspective storytelling and whimsical yet enlightened art carry the graphic novel’s emotions to the end.
"Handsome, delicate, masterful." —Starburst

Screen Tests by Kate Zambreno         $38
Zambreno’s wonderful book consists of 58 “stories”, some of them as short as a sentence, some as long as a few pages, followed by five “essays”, written a few years earlier, somewhat longer. The “essays” are easy and pleasurable to read, he thinks, even if not quite as easy and pleasurable to read as the “stories”, which are written with such lightness and quickness that they are already inside the reader’s mind, fully formed, claiming space, before the reader is aware that their beauty is snide, prickly, misanthropic, resonant with misery and failure. Both the “stories” and the “essays”, are commonly about, or “about”, writers, artists, actors, filmmakers, photographers and others, engaged in a doomed, and therefore, perhaps, heroic, or, if not heroic, then pathetic, or, if such a thing is possible, both heroic and pathetic struggle with the forces of entropy, age, boredom, depression, addiction, AIDS, poverty, prejudice, and so forth, forces that both work against and enable their practice. 
>>Read Thomas's 'review'. 
>>An interview with Kate Zambreno. 
>>Read Thomas's review of The Book of Mutter. 

Listening In by Lynley Edmeades        $28

Edmeades's poems show, often sardonically, how language can be undermined: linguistic registers are rife with uncertainties, ambiguities and accidental comedy. She shuffles and reshuffles statements and texts, and assumes multiple perspectives with the skill of a ventriloquist. These poems probe political rhetoric and linguistic slippages with a sceptical eye, and highlight the role of listening or the errors of listening in everyday communication.

Craven by Jane Arthur        $25
Winner of the 2018 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize. 
"She seems to me a poet of scale and embodiment. Her moments are informed by awe and intelligence – quick and seamless. They don’t have to try so hard. I felt novels and films in these poems. I thought: this is a poet of capacity." — Eileen Myles

The Adventures of Tupaia by Courtney Sina Meredith and Mat Tait        $35
An exquisite illustrated book telling the story of Tupaia, Tahitian priest navigator, who sailed on board the Endeavour with Captain Cook on his first voyage to Aotearoa. Follow Tupaia as he grows up in Ra'iatea, becoming a high-ranking 'arioi and master navigator. Join him as he meets up with Cook in Tahiti and sails as part of the crew on the Endeavour across the Pacific to Aotearoa. Witness the encounters between tangata whenua and the crew as the ship sails around the coast, and discover the important role Tupaia plays as translator and cultural interpreter.
>>Watch the trailer!

The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine       $40
The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret "twin" tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Daphne, copy editor and grammar columnist, devotes herself to preserving the dignity and elegance of Standard English. Laurel, who gives up teaching kindergarten to write poetry, is drawn, instead, to the polymorphous, chameleon nature of the written and spoken word. Their fraying twinship finally shreds completely when the sisters go to war, absurdly but passionately, over custody of their most prized family heirloom: Merriam Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition.

Moth Hour by Anne Kennedy          $25
Kennedy's brother Philip 'Moth' dies when he was 22. In this book Kennedy takes a poem he wrote and makes multiple versions of her own: a gripping, emotional arm-wrestle with tragedy.  

The Jewish Cookbook by Leah Koenig         $80

 Features more than 400 home-cooking recipes for everyday and holiday foods from the Middle East to the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa - as well as contemporary interpretations by renowned chefs including Yotam Ottolenghi, Michael Solomonov, and Alex Raij. A definitive compendium of Jewish cuisine, introducing readers to recipes and culinary traditions from Jewish communities throughout the world. 

Auē by Becky Manawatu         $35
Auē is the sound of sorrow. Sorrow resonates through this multivocal novel about damaged childhoods and the strength that gets children through them. 
“Auē is a novel I could not stop reading” —Renée

The Collection by Nina Leger         $25
A woman builds a 'memory palace' from her anonymous sexual encounters with random men in this novel which inverts the objectification of women's bodies in many novels. 
"Rare and revolutionary." —Lauren Elkin, Guardian

The Ancient Guide to Modern Life by Natalie Haynes       $29
How modern are our lives? Or are we still living the lives our ancestors lived? It's time for us to re-examine what the Greeks and Romans have given us in politics and law, religion and philosophy and education, and to learn how people really lived in Athens, Rome, Sparta and Alexandria.

The Fens: Discovering England's ancient depths by Francis Pryor       $48

A fascinating account of a complex, human-made landscape by archaeologist Francis Pryor who has dug and worked its soil for almost 40 years. Combining archaeology, history and personal experience, he evokes and explains the East of England's marshy and mysterious Fens.

Ornament and Crime by Adolf Loos        $26
"The lack of ornament is a sign of intellectual power." A collection of essays and manifestos on design, aesthetics and materialism from the pioneer Modernist architect. 

Quichotte by Salman Rushdie           $37
Rushdie's riff on Don Quixote sees a modern-day Quichotte travel across America with his imaginary son Sancho on a quest for love. Unfortunately, his daily diet of reality TV, sitcoms, films, soaps, comedies and dramas has distorted his ability to separate fantasy from reality.
>>Read the rest of the 2019 Booker Prize short list. 

We Need New Stories: Challenging the toxic myths behind our age of discontent by Nesrine Malik           $38
We should hardly be surprised by the political crises much of the world the world finds itself in today — the current situation is the culmination of slow but most effective processes that have been undermining liberal democracies for years (and, in fact, often precede them). Malik's clear analyses improve our understanding of the current state of the world. 
"Insightful and persuasive." —Guardian

BOOKS @ VOLUME #143 (7.9.19)

What have we been reading? What would we recommend that you read? What is happening in the world of books? Find out in our NEWSLETTER. 

Women in the Field, One and Two by Thomasin Sleigh  {Reviewed by STELLA} Ruth Bishops is an independent woman in her mid-30s attempting to shape a place for herself in the art world of London in the 1950s. Always interested in drawing, and encouraged by her aunt, she has attended the Slade Art School thanks to a small inheritance. Her time there is disrupted by the war, but she finishes her in the late 40s, her talents being in writing about art and critiquing her fellows’ work. With a small amount of attention garnered from a book she has written on contemporary art, she gains a position at the Fisher Gallery as a keeper: to catalogue the collection, research, and assist with exhibitions. Here, she finds herself in a role she loves, but also in a patriarchal institution where she has to prove herself over and above her male counterparts and is often relegated to overlooked or plainly ignored when it comes to input and meetings. When a retiring director makes her the English advisor* (partly out of spite for his nemesis) to the National Art Gallery of New Zealand, things take an unexpected turn in her rather planned and predictable life. At an exhibition opening she is introduced to an eccentric Russian emigre, Irina Durova, who, on hearing of her role as an advisor, starts to badger Ruth about viewing her work. Eventually, Ruth gives in and arranges to visit Irina’s studio, where she finds a vast array of work spanning several decades. Drawn to two paintings from Irina’s final days in Russia (she migrated to London in 1913), she suggests these to committee at the National Art Gallery, having little hope that they will take her advice. Yet, despite controversy, they do. Irina and Ruth’s relationship develops as they plan the process of getting the works to New Zealand, and surprisingly Irina insists they accompany the works to Wellington. Ruth, who is having difficulties at the Fisher due to petty jealousies and office politics, as well as class and gender prejudices, is happy to have a change of scene, and finds herself on the way to the southern climes. Thomasin Sleigh has written a compelling novel, cleverly blending factual details into this fictional work. The historical references are light-handed, sometimes sharply amusing and fitting, placing this story well in its period. Her prose style is apt: the tone and language feel just right for the time. The two female leads are both convincing: Irina - a hive of conflicting impulses and an off-handedness that points to a deception; and Ruth -  a seemingly naive yet highly observant individual who has grit at her core. Yet this is more than a story of two women making their mark on the page, more than a story of two paintings and their meaning: Sleigh is talking about colonisation, immigration, class and gender. As an art writer, she brings insight and knowledge to this interesting period and shows how art can be a catalyst for changing attitudes. Women in the Field, One and Two (a wonderfully playful title) is a novel that is both thoughtful and provocative, a missive about the art world and creative female practice now, as much as it is about the 1950s. Issues of paternalism, prejudice and favouritism still abound. What does it take and what do you give up to be free and creative? As Irina states: “I kept going and I wouldn’t go back. I had to make it work, because...because that was all I could do. I didn’t know that there were special rules, a special game, about whose art gets seen and whose art is remembered.” The most compelling New Zealand novel I have read this year: clever, witty and engaging.     (*the gallery had English advisors until 1972.) Thomasin Sleigh will be talking with Stella at the VOLUME MAPUA LITERARY FESTIVAL on 21 September. >>Book your tickets now.

These Possible Lives by Fleur Jaeggy  {Reviewed by THOMAS} The desire to understand must not be confused with the desire to know, especially in biography. Too often and too soon an accretion of facts obscures a subject, plastering detail over detail, obscuring the essential lineaments in the mistaken notion that we are approaching a definitive life. Such a life could not be understood. Instead a whittling is required, a paring from the mass of fact all but those details that cannot be separated from the subject, the details that make the subject that subject and not another, the details therefore that are the key to the inner life of the subject and the cause of all the extraneous details of which we are relieved the necessity of acquiring (unless we find we enjoy this as sport). Jaeggy, whose brief fictions, such as those in I am the Brother of XX, remain as pleasant burrs in the mind long after the short time spent reading them, has here written three brief biographies, of Thomas De Quincey, John Keats and Marcel Schwob, each as brief and effective as a lightning strike and as memorable. Jaeggy is interested in discovering what it was about these figures that made them them and not someone else. By assembling details, quotes, sketches of situations, pin-sharp portraits of contemporaries, some of which, in a few words, will change the way you remember them, Jaeggy takes us close to the membrane, so to call it, that surrounds the known, the membrane that these writers were intent on stretching, or constitutionally unable not to stretch, beyond which lay and lies madness and death, the constant themes of all Jaeggy’s attentions, and, for Jaeggy, the backdrop to, if not the object of, all creative striving. How memorably Jaeggy gives us sweet De Quincey’s bifurcation, by a mixture of inclination, reading and opium, from the world inhabited by others, his house a place of “paper storage, fragments of delirium eaten away by dust”, and poor Keats, whose “moods, vague and tentative, didn’t settle over him so much as hurry past like old breezes,” and Schwob, with his appetite for grief tracing and retracing the arcs of his friends’ deaths towards his own. These essays are so clean and sharp that light will refract within them long after you have ceased to read, drawing you back to read again. Is the understanding you have gained of these writers something that belongs to them? Too bad, you will henceforth be unable to shake the belief that you have gained some access to their inner lives that has been otherwise denied.

There is an asymmetrical relationship between the parts of our Book of the Week, Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday. Comprised of two parts—very different in tone—and a coda which forms a sort of pivot between the two, Halliday's book is both very enjoyable to read and a serious exploration of the mechanisms of fiction. 
>>Read Stella's review. 
>>Read an extract. 
>>Halliday talks about the book, about the differences between fiction and non-fiction, &c. 
>>Why Asymmetry has become a literary phenomenon. 
>>To what extent is the 'Alice' character Halliday, and to what extent is the  'Ezra Blazer' character Philip Roth?
>>"Asymmetry is not a mystery novel, at least not in the way that we typically think about that genre. But there is most certainly a mystery at the novel’s core, one that arises from the book’s structure — two seemingly unrelated novellas appended by a short coda — rather than its plot."
>>Come and discuss the novel at our book group on Thursday 19 September. 
>>Start reading. 

NEW RELEASES

Doxology by Nell Zink          $33
No-one's sanity is safe from the pen (or, plausibly, keyboard) of novelist Nell Zink. This novel tackles the 90s music scene, hipsterdom, climate change and political misadventures on the minimal and maximal scale. It is hugely funny, audacious, sharp and indelible (as you would expect). 
"Doxology is superb. In terms of its author’s ability to throw dart after dart after dart into the center of your media-warped mind and soul, it’s the novel of the summer and possibly the year. It’s a ragged chunk of ecstatic cerebral-satirical intellection. It’s bliss." —The New York Times
>>"I am afraid I have to tell you, Nell, you have no subconscious mind." 
>>"Post-sensitive is not a bad description of Zink’s Weltanschauung."
>>“He started playing ukulele soon after his mother died.”

Vivian by Christina Hesselholdt         $36
On the surface, Vivian Maier lived a quiet life as a loving, firm and feisty nanny for wealthy families in Chicago and New York. But throughout four decades, she took more than 150,000 photos, mainly with Rolleiflex cameras. The pictures were only discovered in an auction shortly before she died, impoverished and feasibly very lonely. In a time when self-obsession and representation are at an all-time high, Vivian Maier holds a particular fascination. Who was this eccentric person? Hesselholdt's novel seeks to penetrate the enigma. 
>>Read an excerpt. 
>>Finding Vivian Maier. 
>>Read Thomas's review of Hesselholdt's Companions. 

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy         $37
Levy's new novel is both subtle and audacious, exposing power play on both personal and epochal levels in the story of a man hit twice by cars on the same crossing but in different decades, causing his life to turn under itself like a Möbius strip.
"Brilliant." —Sam Byers, Guardian
>>Levy talks about the book. 
>>Other books by Deborah Levy. 
>>In her writing shed. 

The Broken Estate: Journalism and democracy in a post-truth world by Mel Bunce         $15
In the age of Trump, fake news and clickbait headlines, it is easy to despair about the future of journalism. The New Zealand and global media are in upheaval: the old economic models for print journalism are failing, public funding has been neglected for decades, and many major news organisations are shedding journalists. 

Moonlight Travellers by Will Self and Quentin Blake       $40
A remarkable collaboration between an outstanding illustrator and an outstanding writer. When Self saw Blake's slightly macabre illustrations of people making their ways across moonlit landscapes in eccentric vehicles, he went home and wrote a set of similarly baroquely strange and moon-saturated texts. This astounding book contains both. 

Poems from Hotel Middlemore by Michael Morrissey      $20
Hotel Middlemore, aka Middlemore Hospital, "is the smallest country on earth / tinier than the Vatican / yet more secure / you couldn't escape in a laundry basket / or by disguising yourself as a psychiatrist". "Everyone who is here deserves to be / no possibility of a mistake / doctors do not err / a privilege to know I am a participant / in an enterprise which cannot commit a blunder". Michael Morrissey's 12th book of poetry casts a wry but compassionate eye on life in a New Zealand psychiatric ward: "I'm in the best hotel in the world / grandest view / hot and cold running / but it's a psychiatric ward / everyone mad except me / and I too am mad / as a butchered snake / ram-raided by delusion / I have bipolar disorder which comes / and goes / of its own free will." From Hotel Middlemore Michael Morrissey, "God's blue astronaut / lonely but unafraid", takes us on a journey from a psychiatric ward to "beyond infinity / and back again".

Uncollected Poems by R.A.K. Mason, edited by Roger Hickin      $38
Many of the poems written after 1962's Collected Poems, and those excluded from that collection, have not been published before. 
"As all good writing has to, his writing came from his life. Each poem  belonged to the life, like dark threads pulled away from the frayed sleeve of an old coat. I call that quality authenticity." —James K. Baxter, Landfall 99

Karl Wolfskehl: A poet in exile by Friedrich Voit         $40
Disturbed by the rising anti-Semitism Wolfskehl had left Germany for Switzerland and Italy in 1933. When Italy began to adopt anti-Jewish legislation he fled Europe for distant New Zealand which he had heard was an ‘island of racial equality’. For ten years he found asylum here and the peace to go on writing. Though almost blind, the open-minded and curious German-Jewish poet soon became engaged in the social and cultural life of the country, befriending and influencing many of the leading younger writers, such as R. A. K. Mason, Frank Sargeson, A.R.D. Fairburn and Denis Glover. 
>>Writings by Wolfskehl. 

 Native Son: The writer's memoir by Witi Ihimaera          $40
The second volume of memoir from Ihimaera, following Maori Boy and telling of his experiences as a young writer making his way in a pakeha world, trying to find a place and a voice, exploring his identity and sexuality, and trying to put a secret in his past behind him. 

The Language of the Universe: A visual exploration of mathematics by Colin Stewart and Ximo Abadía    $40

Did you know that mathematics can be beautiful and that it is used in nature every single day? Have you ever wondered how prime numbers can protect us, or why bees use hexagons in their hives? 

Someone's Wife by Linda Burgess        $37
A collection of very personal essays exploring childhood, marriage, life as an All Black wife, and a poignant and strikingly honest reflection on the death of her first born, Toby.
"Lind Burgess can make you laugh and break your heart, often in the same sentence. Clear-eyed and wise, these essays are the stories we share to survive." —Diana Wichtel
>>Burgess talks with Lynn Freeman. 

My First Words in Māori by Stacey Morrison, illustrated by Ali Teo and John O’Reilly       $20
Equips your whanau with the first words you need to speak te reo at home together.

Māori at Work: The Everyday Guide to Using te Reo Māori in the Workplace by Scotty Morrison          $35
Simple, practical and engaging. From the author of the spectacularly popular and useful Maori Made Easy and Maori at Home. 

The Marae Visit by Rebecca Beyer, Linley Wellington and Nikki Slade Robinson        $20
A good introduction to what to expect on a visit to a marae, in te reo Maori, English and Mandarin. 

The Unsettling of Europe: The Great Migration, 1945 to the present by Peter Gatrell         $75
Europe and its relationship with the rest of the world have always been defined by cumulative effects of migrations within and beyond its edges, and migrants have always stood at the heart of the European experience. This book explores the experiences of those seeking a safer or better life, and the effects of their migration upon both the societies they leave and those into which they are welcomed (or not). 
"Gatrell’s eye for detail and sensitivity make this a compelling account that challenges the 'us'-and-'them' framing into which much discussion of migration is forced. Its great strength is that it treats the emotional and cultural aspects of the subject with as much respect as the historical facts and figures." —Guardian

Student Political Action in New Zealand by Sylvia Nissen      $15
Exploring the terrain between activism and apathy, Sylvia Nissen considers what it means to be a political actor from the perspective of students today. Drawing on in-depth interviews with New Zealand tertiary students, she traces their 'desires' for different types of politics, the 'demands' they experience at university, and the 'doubts' that underscore their political engagement.

Archipelago: An atlas of imagined islands edited by Huw Lewis-Jones      $55
Ever since Crusoe was cast away (and probably well before that), distant islands have been scattered across our collective imagination. In this wonderful book, Lewis-Jones, who brought us the wonderful The Writer's Map, allows eighty of the world's leading illustrators to draw a map of an island that really ought (or perhaps ought not) to exist. Includes islands by Christ Riddell, Edward Carey, Aina Bestard, Coralie Bickford-Smith, Tom Gauld, Isabel Greenberg, William Grill, Daniel Reeve (NZ), Herve Tullet, and Takayo Akiyama. 

Frog and Toad: The complete collection by Arnold Lobel         $45
Once upon a time there were a frog and a toad who were very good friends. Frog was always enthusiastic — Toad wasn't so sure. All four deeply loved 'Frog and Toad' books now appear in one lovely hardback volume. 

To the Island of Tides: A journey to Lindisfarne by Alistair Moffat      $50
Lindisfarne, famous for its monastery, home to Saints Aidan and Cuthbert and the place where the celebrated Lindisfarne Gospels were written, is an island rich in history: the Romans knew it as Insula Medicata, it reached the height of its fame in the dark ages, and survived Viking raids before being abandoned after Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. Moffat walks cross-country and through history. 
>>Things we know: Derek Jarman's The Tempest was filmed on Lindisfarne. 

The Seafarers: A journey among birds by Stephen Rutt       $40
Rutt travels to the remotest edges of the British Isles in search of the seabirds that make their homes there. In the face of a looming environmental crisis, his investigation is both personal and passionate. 

 The Exiles: Actors, artists and writers who fled the Nazis for London by Daria Santini        $44

Demonstrates the cultural enrichment that results from an influx of refugees. 

There Are Bugs Everywhere by Britta Teckentrupp        $28
A beautifully illustrated introduction to the lives of insects. 

Modern Sourdough by Michelle Eshkeri     $50
A clear guide to the successful making of sourdough leavened pastries and sweet doughs as well as more traditional breads.

East: 120 vegan and vegetarian recipes from Bangalore to Beijing by Meera Sodha         $50
From the author of Fresh India. 

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and Emily Carroll          $25
Melinda is an outcast at Merryweather High. Something happened over the summer - something bad - and now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen. So what's the point in speaking at all? Through her work on an art project, Melinda is finally able to face what really happened that night. But before she can make peace with the ghosts of the past, she has to confront the reality of the present - and stop someone who still wishes to do her harm. Only words can save her. She can't stay silent. Not any more.
An excellent graphic novel version of Laurie Halse Anderson's classic empowerment story. 

A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings by Helen Jukes        $27
A year spent keeping bees is a year spent learning about yourself and your place in the world. 
''Finely written and insightful'' —Guardian
''A mesmeric, lovely, quietly powerful book. A gentle but compelling account of the redemption that comes from relationship and attention.'' —Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast
''A profound, funny and sometimes deeply moving book that describes a year of inner city bee keeping, while dancing between the history of bees and us and what it means to be human in our modern world.''  —Julia Blackburn, author of Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske

This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the war against reality by Peter Pomerantsev       $33
When information is a weapon, everyone is at war. We live in a world of influence operations run amok, a world of dark ads, psy-ops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, Trump. We've lost not only our sense of peace and democracy — but our sense of what those words even mean.

The Gobbledegook Book: A Joy Cowley anthology illustrated by Giselle Clarkson      $40
An endlessly enjoyable large hardback collection of Cowley's best poems and stories. Absolutely both giveable and haveable.








PRE-PUBLICATION ORDERS are being accepted now for these books (use the 'click and collect' button on our website to reserve your copies):

The Testaments ('The Handmaid's Tale' #2) by Margaret Atwood      $48
Available Tuesday 10 September. 
>>Read an extract. 

The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox         $35
Released Thursday 12 September.